CamSemi secures 10 major design wins

August 09, 2010 // Phil Ling

CamSemi has announced a series of 10 major design wins for its C2160 family of primary side sensing (PSS) controllers that includes designs for five-star rated mobile phone chargers for some of the world’s top five mobile phone brands.

The first two members of CamSemi’s C2160 family were introduced in July 2009 to enable manufacturers to develop and introduce chargers with no-load consumptions of less than 30mW.  The claims the C2161 and C2162 controllers, rated to 4W and 8W respectively, offer very low no-load power and high operating efficiency but also fast start-up times of less than 0.3 seconds to ensure handsets start charging from the moment they are plugged in.

“CamSemi’s C2160 family was launched just 12 months ago and is already proving to be a market winner.  Most of the 10 designs announced today are already in production with the balance going through final approvals and expected to move into high volume production within the next few months.  In addition, we are also seeing sustained interest in these novel controllers not just for five star-rated chargers but also for other applications where manufacturers are looking for improved performance at lower cost,” said John Miller, VP sales for CamSemi.

The C2160 family was specifically developed to enable manufacturers to meet the very toughest demands to cut no-load power but at low cost.  All parts offer a compelling package of system cost and design benefits including: use of low cost bipolar transistors as opposed to more expensive MOSFETs; ‘best in class’ current and voltage regulation of +/- 5% without board level trimming; easily programmable cable compensation of up to 10%; switching frequency adjustment; and quasi-resonant switching to improve efficiency and reduce EMI.

The family has also been recently extended with the C2163 controller which offers the same cost and performance benefits as C2161 and C2162 but for higher power applications including embedded and multiple output supplies for major applications such as networking products and set-top boxes.  The new controller was launched in July 2010 and several active designs are already ongoing.

No-load power consumption is the energy wasted when a charger is left plugged into the wall socket but without the mobile or another handheld device being connected; industry estimates suggest that over 60% of the energy used by an average mobile phone is probably being wasted in this way.  The five star standard was introduced as part of a European industry voluntary agreement by Nokia, Samsung, LG Electronics, Motorola and Sony-Ericsson to help tackle this and allow consumers to more easily identify the most energy-efficient chargers.  Chargers are labelled with no-stars for consumptions more than 0.5 W up to five stars for consumptions of 0.03 W (30mW) or less.

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